Tarun Jain is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Indian School of Business. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Virginia in 2009. His central research interest is the causes and consequences of human capital formation. He is also interested in governance in developing countries, especially India. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such the Journal of Human Resources, Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Public Economics.

His current research projects include an examination of the effects of language on educational outcomes, as well as an evaluation of an innovative school-based gender sensitization program on gender attitudes and outcomes of students. Further information on his professional background and research interests is located here: http://www.isb.edu/faculty/TarunJain

The recently released draft of the National Education Policy stresses the importance of education in the mother tongue, especially in the formative years at school. This column seeks to uncover the link between vernacular language use in schools and educational achievement using data from large-scale historical events in South India. It finds that mother-tongue instruction led to persistent increases in educational achievement in primary and secondary schooling.
read on »

Private health insurance covering tertiary diseases is limited to the upper middle class in India. One reason for low take-up of publicly-financed health insurance among economically weaker sections is that treatment of tertiary diseases relies critically on specific information on facilities and treatment options. This column presents evidence from Andhra’s Aarogyasri programme suggesting that community networks might be an important channel through which such information is obtained.
read on »

The new state of Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014, after a prolonged movement by the people of Telangana region for a separate state. Based on field experiments among citizens in the two successor states, this column finds greater trust in politicians in Andhra relative to Telangana, which may facilitate effective functioning of the State and signal citizens’ expectations from the government.
read on »

Are women in leadership positions more dishonest than men? Based on an artefactual field experiment in rural Bihar, this column finds that women in leadership positions deceive more than men, especially in villages that have previously experienced a female village chief. It suggests that simply reserving seats in village councils for women may not necessarily lead to better outcomes for villagers or women.
read on »

Changing basic gender attitudes may be crucial for alleviating discrimination against women and improving gender outcomes. This column describes a unique measurement tool developed by social psychologists, which was adapted to measure gender attitudes of school children in the state of Haryana. It finds that both boys and girls in grades six and seven display strong same-gender preferences, with boys disproportionately associating females with negative attributes and vice versa.
read on »

In 2011, Economist Kaushik Basu argued that for a class of bribes, the law should not punish the bribe-giver. This column presents results of experiments conducted to test this idea and provides insights for anti-corruption efforts.
read on »

This website is managed by the International Growth Centre, funded by UKaid from
the Department for International Development. The views expressed do not necessarily
reflect official policy, and use of the website is under the terms of use for the website of the London School of
Economics and Political Science.